love and the lifestyle

I have just published an interesting email about this on Uncle Agony. Do add your comments.

the importance of control

The last two posts have been to do with who has control in a relationship. Daneswood told me of an example of her own,

"I had someone offer to pay me £23k a year to be his Mistress. All I had to do is torture him and work him hard as a slave 24/7 and attend the odd business meeting on his behalf. He’d tailored his business to work online 99% of the time. I turned him down because I didn’t feel I’d have all the control, it would be him."

Daneswood felt that despite some of the things he wanted to experience being quite extreme - it was his list of activities not hers. She wouldn't be using her imagination and getting her pleasure from using him. In the end he still had the control as she was carrying out his instructions. Perhaps the financial aspect also gave him some control.

I suppose it was an extreme case of topping from the bottom. I think she was very virtuous to turn down the money though!

leading and being led

This is related to my previous post about who is in control and whether if is okay for a sub to sometimes take the lead and even control in order to give pleasure to her Dom. In this case though it is whether it is okay for a sub to take the lead in order to improve - or even create the necessary dynamic to make the relationship work. The idea came from little one in a comment on Uncle Agony. There was an interesting discussion about whether a sub should perhaps take the lead in emphasising her submission in the hope that it might awaken her husbands dominant side. little one felt this might create a dilemma when ultimately she wanted to be led rather than to lead.

(You can read the full discussion here.)

What do readers think? Is it sometimes good for a sub to take the lead or ultimately might that result in an unfulfilling relationship?

Domination, service and submission

I wrote some time ago about active and passive submission. I explained there how I prefer a sub to actively seek out ways of ensuring my pleasure rather than waiting passively to be used or commanded.

I was reminded of this recently by a post on a message board. The writer who was a Dom said that he sometimes felt submissive if he was passive while his sub was actively pleasing him. I think if a Dom is confident in his dominance then there should be no reason for him to feel submissive. Surely it is the role of a sub to serve and that is what she was doing. However I did get part of his point.

I can remember some years ago receiving a relaxing massage from a platonic friend. It was delightful but I somehow felt almost guilty lying there placidly and receiving pleasure when I felt I should be returning it in some way.

In a sense being serviced by a sub, allowing her to give pleasure, is giving up control and giving the control over to the sub. It is she who is in control of the pleasure giving. Isn't control a key part of the D/s dynamic? Should it not be the Dom who remains in control?

I see no problem with allowing my sub to take control of pleasuring me. However I wonder if other Doms feel it is not appropriate to give up control in this way and whether any subs feel uncomfortable about taking such control?

introducing your submisive needs to your husband part 2

The second similar email was from "London". We discussed whether she would be better discussing it openly with her husband or instead almost trying to seduce him into dominating her. You can read the emails here.

If you have a view then do please add to the comments there.

introducing your submissive needs to your husband

I know a number of subs who have tried to introduce their submissive needs to their husband but who have met with incomprehension or hostility. I occasionally get emails from subs who ask for advice on how to raise their needs with their husband in the hope that he will discover his Dom side and try to meet these needs. Sadly it does not always work out so well. Many husbands find it difficult to overcome their understandable desire to care for and respect their wife and find D/s and BDSM activities an anathema.

I have had two such emails recently. I have published the first on Uncle Agony here. I will publish the other in a few days. If you have similar experiences or some suggestions it would be great to read your comments over there.

anger

I read a post on a message board on a contact site a few days ago.

It was titled "Angry Play".

Basically it was asking if any Doms took it out on their subs when they were angry.

My response was that "Angry Play" isn't play - it is abuse.

I did receive some support for this view and for similar views. However there were many who supported approaches to playing when one was angry.

I have written about anger before here. (It was several years ago and on reading it again found it more articulate than my present thoughts!)

I was surprised though on the message board thread that so many were accepting about different approaches to "angry play". There was a strong feeling that play could help with dissipating anger.

I wondered what my readers think. Is angry play therapeutic or abuse?

kneeling

I am not a religious person. I do not have a religious faith.

But I do find some old churches very special, calm, peaceful places where I can reflect and consider or perhaps dream. I can even indulge myself in ritual or symbolism. A few days ago when I was visiting another city I popped into a favourite historic church. I lit a candle, thinking of some current family issues and those of a close friend. There is something appropriate (comforting?) about such rituals.

Later I remembered two others in the church who were kneeling - perhaps praying and in deep contemplation of things very close and precious to them. I thought about the symbolism of kneeling. This made me think also of subs kneeling for their Master.

In a religious sense it is a symbol (or aspect) of worship. Very powerful. Very intense. Is it this powerfulness and intensity of feeling what is being searched for in the different context of D/s? For the sub as well as for the Master. Or is it something different. Why is kneeling often used in a D/s context?

I have always asked subs to kneel for me. It has given a closeness and preciousness to our relationship - and emphasised the power relationship.

I have read suggestions that as our society becomes more secular many people who no longer have religion are looking for alternatives - such as astrology, meditation, almost anything to fill the gap left. I wondered too whether D/s or BDSM might for some be such an alternative?

A new question for Uncle Agony

Uncle Agony has received a question from puppy. She is a young sub having difficulty in finding a Dom to give her real time experience. You can read her email here.

If you have any suggestions I hope you may add a comment.

Thanks.

punishment

I have been struggling with another post all week ... and want to get it right before publishing - or perhaps just discard it. Perhaps it will be less controversial than I think but I need to word it correctly.

OK - then this is off the top of my head following on from the last post about pain and punishment.

So ...

Why punishment?

What has it got to do with BDSM and D/s?

Is it just an excuse for a sadist to administer pain or for a sub to accept pain? Is it really necessary to use punishment to express control? Surely if a Master has to punish to maintain control then he is not really in control?

How does it fit into Domestic Discipline? Positive reinforcement of acceptable behaviour has been shown to work better than punishment of bad behaviour. I would never condone spanking as an appropriate way of disciplining a child - so why for a wife (or husband)?

How does the concept of "punishment" fit in to BDSM relationships? Surely one can enjoy D/s and BDSM within their own structures and "punishment" need play no part. If I want to beat my sub or she wishes to be beaten then let's do it ... in which case it isn't punishment for either of us.

Please forgive any lightness in the argument here - just to keep you on the ball until the next post!!!!

Thank you all though for continuing to read and comment. I've had some lovely mail and thoughtful comments recently. I really do appreciate all the kind support.

pain and punishment

I have written a number of posts below relating to pain. The one aspect I have perhaps not addressed though is pain in relation to punishment.

It is partly because I have a problem with punishment. Yes - being punished can form part of a play scene - but I would never punish a sub with a beating for instance because she had displeased me. If she felt it would help her to suffer retribution for a misdemeanour then I might be prepared to carry out such a punishment but it would have to be at her request - or even pleading - and only if I judged it would really help her.

So you will have guessed already that I am not into domestic discipline. However I know there are readers of this blog who are part of such relationships. There will be others in different kinds of D/s relationships where pain is used as a punishment for certain behaviours.

But as I have described in other posts below - I want (need?) my sub to gain some satisfaction, fulfilment and even pleasure from pain I administer. Perhaps some subs in a DD relationship will say that they do get satisfaction from a painful punishment.

But therein lies the problem. If one comes to enjoy being punished - then surely it ceases to be a punishment?

A question for Pygar.

I have just received an email from Naughty Monkey. She has asked me a question as part of Q&A month.

As Uncle Agony has had few questions to answer recently I have published my answer to her interesting question on that blog. You can read it here.

Do pop over and let us know what you think.

Intimacy

When I was a college student I bought a book by Jean Paul Satre called Intimacy.

Why did I buy it?

Perhaps I was tempted by the picture on the cover. Or was it the phrase "corruption of love" in the description. There was certainly the pretension of pseudo-intellectualism in carrying it around with me unread!

But there was too something powerful about the word.

Intimacy

Perhaps it was something I craved but didn't have. It seemed to imply something erotic and special - a depth of experience I had not had then. I doubt I knew the meaning of intimacy at that time and I wonder if I do now.

It is not a word I use often. Certainly not recently. In thinking over the last few days about its meaning I found my immediate response to be very physical. To talk of an intimate relationship or encounter seems almost synonymous with describing a sexual one. Is that not how the word is most often used? Intimate contact seems to imply sexual contact, genital contact - a purely physical act.

However the more I thought of the word the more those earlier feelings returned. Intimacy seemed to imply something special - certainly more than fumbling sexual contact. There is an emotional context to it as well. There is emotional intimacy as well as physical intimacy. "Intimacy" itself seems to imply a physical and emotional connection that is much more subtle.

The more I have thought about it the more I feel that it implies a very special relationship that is not love or sex or affection or physical contact. There is something sensual about the word but something that implies a closeness that cannot be described by those other words.

I found myself thinking about this having read Jz's post about her relationship and some difficult thoughts and decisions.

In it she wrote,

"It is in that loft, however, where the intangible thing comes out to play.
It's not love - I've had that with people who never made it through the hallway. But it is nearly as visceral.
Because those who've run the gamut win my trust and together, we generate intimacy. True, profound, binding intimacy."

The word within that very powerful phrase held me. True, profound, binding intimacy.

I still don't think I fully understand "intimacy" or what it means. However, I have been reminded of the power of it and feel I should search it out once more.

I write of it here because it seems central to a bdsm relationship. What could be more intimate?

domination, pain and sadism

This is a follow up post to my previous post on submission, pain and masochism and its follow up pain.

My thoughts started with a combination of each but felt it might be better to try to raise issues from each side of the Dom/sub and sadist/masochist divide separately.

Dominance does not imply violence. In my day to day life I hate violence. I could not countenance hitting another person.

Unless.

Unless ...

... it was part of a consensual BDSM relationship.

How about if it were part of a consensual D/s relationship? Perhaps.

Perhaps?

Well ... it could be part of administering control and establishing dominance. It clearly would be with consent - but not necessarily with desire though I would treat it differently in each case.

The acceptance of pain can be a way that a sub can express her submission and a Dom can emphasise the element of control. However a Dom needs to take care here. The pain should not be in itself the controlling characteristic. A Dom should not control through the threat or administration of pain. In such cases it may cease to be Domination and become abuse.

No - it is rather through the acceptance of pain that within a trusting D/s relationship a sub may express the depth of her submission. This might seem like "topping from the bottom" but I believe it has to be the sub's acceptance of pain rather than the Dom's administration of pain that is the key in a non-masochistic relationship.

My key enjoyment is the combination and contrast of pleasure and pain. The exploration of the sensuality of sensation - whether pleasure or pain. The discovery of sensuous and sexual desire though exploration of sensation that could be either or both at the same time. As a switch friend once said to me, "pain is merely extreme sensation and not necessarily to be avoided - and sometimes even to be embraced."

But what if she is merely accommodating my own sadism? Am I a sadist if I enjoy the administration of pain? Does that matter? Does that make me cruel? Does that matter?

I enjoy administering pain as long as it is within a trusting D/s setting - where I know that on some level my sub partner is getting as much from it as me. Indeed I enjoy it all the more if I know that she is enjoying it too. I love masochists!

If she wasn't - I'm not sure I could do it.

But ...

I was interested in something Jz wrote on a recent post. She quoted a conversation with a Dom friend when he said ...

"That is really how I am, You must whimper because you are really whimpering, so that it is completely for my pleasure, and knowing that is what has to give you pleasure."

He wants her to whimper. To really whimper. Only for his pleasure. There is real sadism there. But he wants her to gain her own pleasure from knowing that it is giving him pleasure. In the end it will only work if she has pleasure too.

Part of me would like to search for that woman who will willingly whimper for me through knowing that it gives me pleasure. But part of me wants more than that - I want her to gain pleasure from the physical aspect too. I worry that the psychological pleasure of knowing she has pleased me could be so easily manipulated by some that it could come close to abuse.

I want most of all the sensuality of the connection of pleasure and pain.

pain

I had planned to move on from my last post about "submission, pain and masochism" to discuss it from the Dom's perspective. However the fascinating comments to the previous post have raised a few more points I would like to discuss first.

♥LETRENTEAVRIL♥ mentioned emotional pain. That seemed to bring in a whole new dimension which probably deserves - and, who knows, one day may get - a post all to itself. Emotional pain seems a very harsh thing to inflict on a sub - more so than physical pain. In many ways physical pain is easier to control - to recognise the impact of what one is administering. But emotional pain? That could be damaging in ways one could never see. Emotional or psychological bruises are invisible unlike physical ones.

I would be wary of administering emotional pain - but I recollect a meeting with a sub friend some time ago. We used to play together occasionally and I used to try to have a theme to make each meeting different. For one I chose pain and told her beforehand. I imagined she would expect it was about different kinds of physical pain - and of course it was - but also about other kinds of pain. I forget now what I had planned but remember introducing the pain of denial, the pain of rejection and of humiliation. I suppose these are kinds of emotional pain but they were intended in gentle ways where the effect was not intended to last outside the time of our meeting - but who can tell?

The other point that came from the comments was the lack of admission of masochism. In the main pain was tied up with the notion of submission - a gift to one's master. A few talked of their occasional enjoyment of pain and how this had developed, perhaps leading into masochism. However there was no detailed comment from someone who was able to describe enjoying pain for its own sake - or for what pain alone could bring to her fulfilment.

I suppose there are few who eagerly seek out pain but there are those who do gain great satisfaction from it. Sometimes they can be the same person. A sub friend - who I have not played with - told me of how she had a low pain threshold. She did not enjoy it at all. But she was seeking a master who could beat her severely. Once a dom had beaten her until she went into subspace. She said he was skilled and knew what he was doing and stayed with her holding her gently and close as she took some hours to come back down from that special place. She longed to find it again.

I wonder if others have had such experiences?